Sunday, February 01, 2004

31 January, 2004

Some sanity in Taxachusetts: "The state's highest court refused yesterday to block the use of the MCAS exam as a graduation requirement, dealing a blow to high school students who are suing to abolish the controversial test. The Supreme Judicial Court denied a request for an injunction to stop the state from giving the high-stakes exam pending the outcome of a lawsuit, saying an injunction 'would undermine educator accountability and hinder education reform.'"

30 January, 2004

Seattle schools learn money doesn't buy grades "Seattle school officials are learning a valuable but surprising lesson -- throwing money at schools doesn't always help kids achieve. And spending more money on some students rather than others does little more than cause trouble. Under Seattle's weighted student formula, schools with kids who are poor, not fluent in English or have special needs get more money to help them compete. Only it doesn't seem to work. 'If money is the only thing we need to make better schools ... then we would have seen that by now,' said Lynn Harsh of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, an Olympia-based group that focuses on state budgets and tax policy, welfare reform, health-care reform, education and governance issues. 'Instead we're seeing the opposite results.'"

29 January, 2004

An interesting comment from a reader on my post yesterday about a brilliant black who is not allowed to teach High School: "Yes - there are Racists in Atlanta - racists who just don't want their Black students to have good role models - most likely the under achievers at the school - not the students, but the teachers and administrators who just can't stand someone that looks like them being a hell of a lot smarter". I think that may have hit the nail on the head.

The "gender" divide in education: Maybe a comeback of same sex schools is needed -- or maybe less feminist teachers -- or maybe males have been more rebellious against the Leftist and Greenie propaganda that so often passes for education these days: "The women's movement has taught us many things, one of the more surprising being that boys are not performing in school as well as they might... In the late 1970s more girls than boys began to enroll in college, and the disparity has since increased. Today women make up approximately 56 percent of all undergraduates, outnumbering men by about 1.7 million. In addition, about 300,000 more women than men enter graduate school each year." Given the meaninglessness of a lot of the credentials concerned, it may just mean that men have found better things to do -- like go into business.

28 January, 2004

Not all immigrants are equal -- despite what the Leftists would like to think: Apparently the Indians expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin who went to the UK are now one of the highest per capita income groups in the UK. They were entrepreneurial, with strong middle class ambitions and had received a traditional British-style education.

26 January, 2004

DECODING PC EDUCATION-SPEAK

Michael Duffy tells how parents decode what defenders of government schools say:

"Here is a list of the values which, according to the defenders of state schools, are taught in them. In brackets I suggest what it really means to lots of parents:

Public schools preach diversity and accept every child who comes to their door. (Troublemakers are churned through the system.)

They are inclusive and accept children from poor families. (Your child's fellow pupils will come from homes that don't value education.)

They teach egalitarianism. (You'll never be told exactly how your child compares with the rest of the class.)

They accept children of all races and levels of academic ability.
(Your child will be dragged down by the presence in class of kids who don't want to be there.)

They advocate the good old Aussie fair go. (Pupils who misbehave won't be punished.)

They teach most physically and intellectually disabled children. (Your child's teacher will spend much of her time coping with problems for which she has been ill-prepared and resourced.)

They teach tolerance. (Bad teachers cannot be removed.)"

The above is an extract from an article in The Courier Mail newspaper of Brisbane, Australia -- published on January 24th, 2004 (p. 28) -- but which does not appear to be otherwise available online

DESTRUCTIVE PC EDUCATION

"Minnesota's Commissioner of Education, comprehensively relates the history of American middle schools, focusing on a reform movement dedicated to egalitarianism that took shape in the middle of the 20th century. As part of this movement, a body of research and literature grew around the ideas that 1) middle school students cannot learn challenging material, 2) treating students differently based on skill level is harmful, and 3) middle schools should be used to conduct social experiments. The National Middle School Association, founded in 1973, embraced these ideas and led a movement to make all students equal through the suppression of excellent students.

This, says Yecke, is unethical. "Public schools were never meant to be the vehicle for massive social experiments aimed at achieving the questionable utopian goals of an elite few," she says.

Clearly the most destructive and widely-practiced method to accomplish these ends is what Yecke calls "heterogeneous grouping." Here students within classes are broken into groups and given assignments. The groups intermingle talented students with students who, though capable, either do not apply themselves to the same degree or do not grasp concepts as quickly. The result is that gifted students who already understand the material are not challenged by the content, thereby preventing their advancement and attenuating their ability to perform. The students who do not grasp the material do not participate as much in the project at hand, convinced that the talented students can do the work quicker and more completely; these non-participants, who are in need of the practice, then fall further behind their peers. Yecke explains how this process also takes place through peer tutoring and cooperative learning (similar to heterogeneous grouping).

Thus, in an attempt to treat all students equally, proponents of egalitarianism and "heterogeneous grouping" successfully restrain talented students, preventing their success, and completely alienate the perfectly capable students who simply take longer to grasp the same concepts.

"Amazingly, their message is that high ability students should succumb to peer pressure and strive not to achieve, or they will risk making their classmates look bad--and their actions might even go so far as to force these non-motivated students to work harder!" Yecke says.

In her final chapter, "Implications for the 21st Century," a perceptive analysis of the implications of the middle school movement, Yecke argues that the movement's core values are un-American. "American values such as rewarding individual effort, honoring individual achievement, and promoting healthy competition have given way to a capricious smorgasbord of liberal ideas that undermine...traditional values in many of our schools." She goes on to say, "Beliefs driving radical equity include the leveling of achievement and the desire for equality of outcomes. This is in stark contrast with the premise underlying our nation's founding principles."

The middle school reform movement has sabotaged America's schools, and this intellectual genocide needs to be stopped. In one sense, while middle school reformers have not made all students equal, they have given all students subject to their poisonous methods something in common: none can achieve their full potential"

Biased schools: "Some material taught in NSW [Australia] public schools was anti- farmer and 'blatantly deep green,' Acting Prime Minister John Anderson said today. Prime Minister John Howard this week sparked a political debate on education when he said government schools were too politically correct. Mr Anderson welcomed the debate on public schools, saying teachers' unions and government school curriculums were sometimes too ideological. He said some lessons on sustainable development given in NSW schools were biased against farmers."

About time: "A well-known conservative is reaching out to state lawmakers to beat back what he claims is rampant political bias against students and faculty who do not agree with a pervasive liberal orthodoxy in state schools across the country. As a result, leaders in several states are reportedly working on anti-bias legislation, including Colorado state Sen. John Andrews. Andrews told Foxnews.com that lawmakers in the state General Assembly plan to introduce a bill in coming weeks that would require state college and university officials to educate students and faculty better about their rights against political and ideological bias by other professors and administrators."

23 January, 2004

SHOCKING: STUDENTS WHO CRITICIZE THEIR PROFESSORS!

But only Leftists are allowed to criticize of course. Freedom of thought is just not "appropriate" in an American university

"Republican students at the University of Colorado launched a Web site to gather complaints about left-leaning faculty members, saying they want to document discrimination against conservative students and indoctrination to the liberal viewpoint," the Associated Press reports from Boulder.

"I'm shocked the students would resort to this," says Barbara Bintliff, a law professor and chairman of the Boulder Faculty Assembly. "I'm concerned they may wind up with a blacklist." Is it really so shocking that young people would use their right to free speech and question authority?

"Mr Howard said students were being moved out of public schools into the private system because there was too much political correctness in the government school system.

Figures released earlier this month show non-government schools will receive $4.7 billion in federal funding in 2004, beating universities which will receive $4.5 billion.
Public schools, which are largely financed by state governments, will get $2.4 billion in federal assistance.

Earlier, Mr Howard accused teachers' unions of being "out of step'' with mainstream views, and backed the publication of national league tables ranking public schools by performance.

In an interview with The Australian, Mr Howard also called for consideration of an after-hours care program supervising homework, to provide parents with more quality time with their children. Parents now send almost 40 per cent of teenagers to private secondary schools, and one in three Australian children overall do not attend public schools.

"They feel that government schools have become too politically correct and too values-neutral," Mr Howard said.

"It's a reflection of the extent to which political correctness overtook this country. Particularly through the teachers' unions, which I think are a bit out of step.
"Some schools think you offend people by having nativity plays. You know, the increasingly antiseptic view ... taken about a whole lot of things."

Mr Howard, who attended a public school in Sydney, said he did not want their enrolments to fall. "I don't want to see state schools decline, in fact I think it is important to maintain them," he said. "I'm a state-school boy myself. My wife and I both went to selective state schools. We sent our children to state schools at a primary level. It is fundamentally quite a good thing if every child at some stage can have an education at a state school. I'm not saying people have to ... particularly for Catholics."

He backed controversial calls to publish league tables ranking schools by performance. "The more information parents have about schools and their performance the better," he said. "My judgement is that the envy line that (the Australian Labor Party) ran at the last election fell on its face very badly."

Mr Howard said the present funding arrangements were "quite good", despite calls to introduce a voucher system giving parents a set amount they could spend at public or private schools. "One of the reasons why the voucher system was never adopted in Australia some years ago was that it doesn't sit easily with the funding of the Catholic system," he said"

The private school system in Australia is so huge in part because all sorts of non-government schools already receive big Federal government funding. So a voucher system would not be a big improvement on that

20 January, 2004

AND PEOPLE PAY FOR THIS!

I noticed that the professor who had just finished giving a test in the same classroom had accidentally left a copy of his test behind. It was a true/false exam. It was loaded with questions like "True or false. The American criminal justice system is racist" and "True or false. The war on drugs is racist." I thought the professor's method was pretty direct. Just repeat my political views for points. Dissenters will repeat the course.

"Discuss what makes human beings suspicious or afraid of each other. Pupils could interrogate bookmarked - or otherwise preselected - websites to find out why medieval Christians were suspicious and sometimes afraid of Jews. It is not recommended that pupils should search the internet themselves for information for this topic"

There is of course a lot of rubbish on the internet but it is no worse than the Leftist and Greenie rubbish that the kids get taught by their own teachers so the idea of teaching critical thinking as a way of dealing with internet nonsense would be far too dangerous. The kids might start thinking about what their teachers say as well. So once again we have the tried-and-true Leftist solution: political censorship. Leftists cannot AFFORD free speech or free thought.

Another section on the same site, about the achievements of Islam, specifies learning how the Crusades failed to dislodge Islam but there seems to be no mention of centuries of Islamic jihad in Europe failing to dislodge Christianity!

13 January, 2004

Dave Huber has a good post on the nonsense that passes for modern educational theory -- and which is all too often being imposed on our kids nowadays. I myself have taught High School under both systems -- "student directed" and "traditional" and there is no doubt which delivers students who know their subject.

11 January, 2004

MORE INSANE PC INTOLERANCE

Fun is now incorrect

In other zero-tolerance news, the Seattle Times reports that Alexander Graham Bell Elementary School in nearby Kirkland has expanded zero-tolerance madness to cover snowball fights:

"Julie Miles has two kids at A.G. Bell Elementary in Kirkland, a school with a zero tolerance for snowballs. Students there say they were told they can't even touch the snow, much less pack and hurl it".

And they're at it again in Rio Rancho, N.M. The Associated Press reports "a teenager has been suspended from Rio Rancho Mid-High School for five days for bringing an over-the-counter drug to school." The drug, Gas-X, "breaks up gas bubbles in the digestive tract."

"You must not do anything without my permission" seems to be the message. Maybe the fact that he was a boy was his real sin.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram columnist Dave Lieber reports that [student] Carl used the instant-messaging system on the schools obsolete DOS-based computer network to send the message "Hey!" to some 80 users. "At first, Principal Tommy Rollins didn't think much of it," Lieber reports. But Beverly Sweeney, "a computer teacher and campus computer liaison with the district," was outraged. She tracked Carl down, confronted him and demanded: "Do you know that this is serious?" Eventually the principal suspended the boy for three days.

Australia has nothing remotely like the race problems of the USA but lots of parents (including myself) still send their children to private schools. And Government statistics expose the myth that private schools are for the rich. "A breakdown of parental income shows 9 per cent of Australia's 3.3 million students live in families where the average annual income is less than $20,800. Almost one in five of these students - about 50,000 children - go to a non-government school". People just like to have choices about how their children are educated. But the advocates of government education don't like that one bit.

Is "free" education and medical care too expensive? This excerpt from a National Review article (not online) by Stephen Moore (titled "Nice goin' Uncle Sam") suggests that it is: "According to Department of Labor consumer-price index (CPI) data, since the creation of Medicare in the mid 1960s the health-care component of the CPI has grown at roughly twice the rate of economy-wide inflation. But in the 15 years prior to Uncle Sam's taking on the role of health insurer, medical inflation grew at about the same rate as inflation in other sectors of the economy. There are only two industries in America today that suffer from rampant inflation: health care and education. In virtually all other sectors of the economy, prices are relatively stable, or even falling. So why do prices in these two industries gallop out of control? In both cases, government plays a domineering role."

4 January, 2004

The is an amusing NYT article by David Brooks here that says that in the next election the GOP can no longer advocate reducing the size of government (because they don't reduce it) so will have to advocate change. That proposal is of course meant to be provocative and one hopes that it is. It might help drive out the last remnants of the nonsensical claim that conservatives oppose change. Brooks is right. There is a whole heap of Democrat nonsense enshrined in U.S. law that badly needs changing. Abolishing the entire U.S. public school system and replacing it with vouchers would be one nice change. No alternative school system could be worse than the present one as far as I can see. No doubt it won't happen but it gives you an idea of the scope for change that exists. And how about legislating for more "diversity" on campus by setting quotas that say the percentage of conservative professors on campus must mirror the percentage of conservatives in the community?

Britain: Shuffling the deckchairs on the "Titanic": "Downing Street advisers are pressing for the Government to take over direct funding of schools, which could spell the end of local education authorities. Two of Tony Blair's senior aides want him to 'nationalise' school spending, channelling money to headteachers and governors through a central agency that would 'cut out the middle man.'"

2 January, 2004

MORE "FREE SPEECH" AT SCHOOL

The teachers concerned deny being Leftist but prove the accusations themselves by their deeds

"Tim Bueler recently received some unusual advice: His principal and a campus police officer suggested that he stay home from his California high school for a few days.

They feared for his safety because Tim, the founder of Rancho Cotate High School's new Conservative Club, said he had received threats from other students after writing an article for the club newsletter calling for a crackdown on illegal immigration.

The 17-year-old junior says that stance inspired threats from which teachers have refused to protect him. Some faculty members even started a public campaign against his group, which seeks to promote "the pillars of the Bible, patriotism and conservative beliefs as balance to the mostly liberal viewpoints of teachers," according to its newsletter, "The Conservative Agenda."

In a telephone interview, Tim said he's been threatened at least three times by Hispanic students who call him "white boy" and "racist." One boy said he was going to "find someone" to beat up Tim.

In two of those instances, Tim said two faculty members stood by and did nothing to help him."

Background

Primarily covering events in Australia, the U.K. and the USA -- where the follies are sadly similar.

The only qualification you really need for any job is: "Can you do it?"

Particularly in academe, Leftism is motivated by a feeling of superiority, a feeling that they know best. But how fragile that claim clearly is when they do so much to suppress expression of conservative ideas. Academic Leftists, despite their pretensions, cannot withstand open debate about ideas. In those circumstances, their pretenses are contemptible. I suspect that they are mostly aware of the vulnerability of their arguments but just NEED to feel superior

"The two most important questions in a society are: Who teaches our children? What are they teaching them?" - Plato

Keynes did get some things right. His comment on education seems positively prophetic: "Education is the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the indifferent by the incompetent.”

"If you are able to compose sentences in Latin you will never write a dud sentence in English." -- Boris Johnson

"Common core" and its Australian equivalent was a good idea that was hijacked by the Left in an effort to make it "Leftist core". That made it "Rejected core"

TERMINOLOGY: The English "A Level" exam is roughly equivalent to a U.S. High School diploma. Rather confusingly, you can get As, Bs or Cs in your "A Level" results. Entrance to the better universities normally requires several As in your "A Levels".

The BIGGEST confusion in British terminology, however, surrounds use of the term "public school". Traditionally, a public school was where people who were rich but not rich enough to afford private tutors sent their kids. So a British public school is a fee-paying school. It is what Americans or Australians would call a private school. Brits are however aware of the confusion this causes benighted non-Brits so these days often in the media use "Independent" where once they would have used "public". The term for a taxpayer-supported school in Britain is a State school, but there are several varieties of those. The most common (and deplorable) type of State school is a "Comprehensive"

MORE TERMINOLOGY: Many of my posts mention the situation in Australia. Unlike the USA and Britain, there is virtually no local input into education in Australia. Education is mostly a State government responsibility, though the Feds have a lot of influence (via funding) at the university level. So it may be useful to know the usual abbreviations for the Australian States: QLD (Queensland), NSW (New South Wales), WA (Western Australia), VIC (Victoria), TAS (Tasmania), SA (South Australia).

There were two brothers from a famous family. One did very well at school while the other was a duffer. Which one went on the be acclaimed as the "Greatest Briton"? It was the duffer: Winston Churchill.

Another true modern parable: I have twin stepdaughters who are both attractive and exceptionally good-natured young women. I adore both of them. One got a university degree and the other was an abject failure at High School. One now works as a routine government clerk and is rather struggling financially. The other is extraordinarily highly paid and has an impressive property portfolio. Guess which one went to university? It was the former.

The above was written a couple of years ago and both women have moved on since then. The advantage to the "uneducated" one persists, however. She is living what many would see as a dream.

The current Left-inspired practice of going to great lengths to shield students from experience of failure and to tell students only good things about themselves is an appalling preparation for life. In adulthood, the vast majority of people are going to have to reconcile themselves to mundane jobs and no more than mediocrity in achievement. Illusions of themselves as "special" are going to be sorely disappointed

On June 6, 1944, a large number of young men charged ashore at Normandy beaches into a high probability of injury or death. Now, a large number of young people need safe spaces in case they might hear something that they don't like.

Perhaps it's some comfort that the idea of shielding kids from failure and having only "winners" is futile anyhow. When my son was about 3 years old he came bursting into the living room, threw himself down on the couch and burst into tears. When I asked what was wrong he said: "I can't always win!". The problem was that we had started him out on educational computer games where persistence only is needed to "win". But he had then started to play "real" computer games -- shootem-ups and the like. And you CAN lose in such games -- which he had just realized and become frustrated by. The upset lasted all of about 10 minutes, however and he has been happily playing computer games ever since. He also now has a First Class Honours degree in mathematics and is socially very pleasant. "Losing" certainly did not hurt him.

Even the famous Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci (and the world's most famous Sardine) was a deep opponent of "progressive" educational methods. He wrote: "The most paradoxical aspect is that this new type of school is advocated as being democratic, while in fact it is destined not merely to perpetuate social differences, but to crystallise them." He rightly saw that "progressive" methods were no help to the poor

"Secretary [of Education] Bennett makes, I think, an interesting analogy. He says that if you serve a child a rotten hamburger in America, Federal, State, and local agencies will investigate you, summon you, close you down, whatever. But if you provide a child with a rotten education, nothing happens, except that you're liable to be given more money to do it with." -- Ronald Reagan

I am an atheist of Protestant background who sent his son to Catholic schools. Why did I do that? Because I do not personally feel threatened by religion and I think Christianity is a generally good influence. I also felt that religion is a major part of life and that my son should therefore have a good introduction to it. He enjoyed his religion lessons but seems to have acquired minimal convictions from them.

Why have Leftist educators so relentlessly and so long opposed the teaching of phonics as the path to literacy when that opposition has been so enormously destructive of the education of so many? It is because of their addiction to simplistic explanations of everything (as in saying that Islamic hostility is caused by "poverty" -- even though Osama bin Laden is a billionaire!). And the relationship between letters and sounds in English is anything but simple compared to the beautifully simple but very unhelpful formula "look and learn".

For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

"Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts. Nothing else will ever be of service to them ... Stick to Facts, sir!" So spake Mr Gradgrind, Dickens's dismal schoolteacher in Hard Times, published 1854. Mr Gradgrind was undoubtedly too narrow but the opposite extreme -- no facts -- would seem equally bad and is much closer to us than Mr Gradgrind's ideal

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

A a small quote from the past that helps explain the Leftist dominance of education: "When an opponent says: 'I will not come over to your side,' I calmly say, 'Your child belongs to us already. You will pass on. Your descendents, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time, they will know nothing else but this new community.'." Quote from Adolf Hitler. In a speech on 6th November 1933

I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learned much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age.

I imagine that the the RD is still sending mailouts to my 1950s address!

Discipline: With their love of simple generalizations, this will be Greek to Leftists but I see an important role for discipline in education DESPITE the fact that my father never laid a hand on me once in my entire life nor have I ever laid a hand on my son in his entire life. The plain fact is that people are DIFFERENT, not equal and some kids will not behave themselves in response to persuasion alone. In such cases, realism requires that they be MADE to behave by whatever means that works -- not necessarily for their own benefit but certainly for the benefit of others whose opportunities they disrupt and destroy.

Popper in "Against Big Words": "Every intellectual has a very special responsibility. He has the privilege and the opportunity of studying. In return, he owes it to his fellow men (or 'to society') to represent the results of his study as simply, clearly and modestly as he can. The worst thing that intellectuals can do - the cardinal sin - is to try to set themselves up as great prophets vis-à-vis their fellow men and to impress them with puzzling philosophies. Anyone who cannot speak simply and clearly should say nothing and continue to work until he can do so."

Many newspaper articles are reproduced in full on this blog despite copyright claims attached to them. I believe that such reproductions here are protected by the "fair use" provisions of copyright law. Fair use is a legal doctrine that recognises that the monopoly rights protected by copyright laws are not absolute. The doctrine holds that, when someone uses a creative work in way that does not hurt the market for the original work and advances a public purpose - such as education or scholarship - it might be considered "fair" and not infringing.

Comments above from Brisbane, Australia by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.) -- former teacher at both High School and university level

There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)

NOTE: The archives provided by blogspot below are rather inconvenient. They break each month up into small bits. If you want to scan whole months at a time, the backup archives will suit better. See here or here